Why GOOGLE PLUS has finally arrived ?

February 26, 2012 2 Comments

A lot of marketing and social media experts keep on quoting numbers, statistics and all sorts of stuff about how successful Google Plus has been. The supporters say it is fastest growing social network.

Strengths quoted  -

1) API has not been released yet so there is immense potential left to be untapped

2) Google drive will and its SDK support to third party apps will give Google Plus more muscle. Hope to see the drive being released soon.

3) Google charges less commission from Game developers than facebook does leading so several gaming flag bearers like Zyga to launch games on Google Plus as well. In future we might be looking at Google plus only Games being developed, not to forget Google is an investor in Zynga.

Weakness quoted -

1) Lack of clarity on how much people are actually using Google Plus. No data on average user time spent on Google Plus is available. Considering most social networks have their revenues driven by ads, average time spent is very critical aspect

2) Facebook is believed to be too big to fail and with its impending IPO it will have access to huge amount of funds. These funds can help it rapidly acquire complementary companies and give the search giant a tough time

3) The Open Graph and time line have finally taken off. Publishers and vendors like Digg, Spotify, Yahoo News have witnessed massive upswings in their usage from their core target audience YOUTH.  Facebook has made lot of people stakeholders thereby having more than Zuck and team itself left to defend the FacebookVille.

4) Google which has no dearth of competitors, after ending its search deal with Twitter and driving it into arms of Yandex has one more fund rich company gunning at its turf.

Now coming back to the title of the post … it is inspired by what my 14 year old cousin sister told me when I saw that she added me to her circle in Google Plus. I just casually teased her saying Welcome to G+, now you finally made an account on G+

It was her reply to my question which got me thinking -

Bro, please don’t tell mom I am there in G+. She knows Facebook but it is tough to explain her G+. But you see I gotta be there on G+. It is this attitude which lead to demise of Myspace, Bebo and Orkut (almost) when the dominant player failed to understand the user sentiment and didn’t innovate fast enough and importantly were not COOL any longer. I was reading this article on MIT blog – Why dominant companies are vulnerable … and I could make a correlation , why Facebook is vulnerable and is being  seriously impacted by Google Plus.

Welcome Google Plus … if the youth has started moving who don’t understand the big tech wars and platform openness kind of nerd concepts, you have really arrived

 

Filed under Brand Talk, Marketing, Opinion Uncensored, Technology Tagged with , , , , , ,

Audio advertising – the new post display ad frontier

February 25, 2012 3 Comments

I recently noticed some sites going retro to the days of Radio Advertising and applying interesting innovations in that -

The two primary modes I noticed the way websites are deploying this

1) Normal – There is ad being played on the web page with Audio ad along with a static images. A user may or may not be provided with option to stop the ad. Sometimes there is an option to turn off the volume of ad and sometimes users just have to live with the voice ad. They have no option to do anything about that. However this is a very old way of advertising and is not much of innovation.

2) Stealth – These are the kind of audio ads which I recently noticed being used by the sites. They are real innovation ( dunno for good or bad) & are  embedded somewhere in the page. The moment the page loads they start playing.  Any normal user can’t find the ad on the page since it is hidden. Neither can it be stopped, volume level changed. The web portal manager can guarantee the ad owner with a much higher degree of surety that the message is reached to it audience. One of such sites is rediff.com .

Implications:  I am still evaluating how much it can piss off your readers and how much ad dollars it can bring in for web portal/site owner. As a user, though I hated being forced to listen to an ad for female stockings whenever I would try to read news on my favourite news portal. Did I stop using the portal, not really ? Did I get pissed off … yes I did.

So what is the threshold till which an ad rendered stretch their users ? Future of sites like Facebook is all dependent on the answer of this question. Looking forward to see if Facebook also would like to follow audio ads or if the privacy advocates look into this and  find an issue worth probing .

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Contextual Advertising – Desperate for Innovation

February 4, 2012 1 Comment

Contextual advertising which is bread and butter of several big companies today but to my understanding is in desperate need to reinvent itself. Contextual advertising is loosing its relevance in current times.

Following is an example of weird ads being displayed for dating / porn sites when I am watching a Punjabi Song  which is hailing the glory of culture in a specific province in India.  I don’t understand how does context for these two things match up.  Perhaps the algorithms for rendering ads have not kept pace with the surge in possible scenarios.

From Blog References

Facebook, the recent darling of stock markets because of filing if its IPO is no behind and actually at some points leaves behind Google in proving my statement.

Two examples of wasting ad dollars of advertisers in the image -

1) A student of NUS MBA ( information which they have by my willing disclosure) being served advertisements of another business school. What does Facebook expect me to do – leave my course and join course of another school midway my course at current school.

2) A person living in Singapore being served ads for renting a car in Punjab ( a province in India) when I don’t have that place ever checked in or in place of my belonging. At no place in my profile that place is present, yet cars for rent in that province. The place is several thousand miles from my current place.

From Blog References

I hope contextual advertising evolves before it gets obsolete.  Several years ago a start up made by 2 PhD students revolutionized the way information of world is organized. Looks like time is coming for another revolution to take place. Amen.

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An Open Letter to Marc Zuckerberg @ Facebook

July 17, 2011 1 Comment

Hello Marc,

Good Morning,

I want to ask you a couple of questions about your facebook strategies as I couldn’t understand why are you so determined to downplay its best features and break the things which are working fine in an ordinate zeal to fix them.

Q1. Why the ‘friend list’ and selective post visibility by removing friend list is never talked about in privacy settings. ?

I have about 15 overlapping friend lists giving me nice privacy controls deciding what to show to whom and it works much better than groups.  The suggested approach of GROUPS just doesn’t work . Simple example – I am part of 4 groups and have 15 friend lists.
Facebook Groups don’t solve even 1% of my privacy concerns but the facebook freind list solves 95% of them

Facebook Groups are  akin to communities which Orkut and such sites had.  For all practical purposes , it is the friend lists which are of best use in granular control of one’s privacy.

I am assuming none ever told you about these power of Friend List  feature,  as to why else you won’t talk about them and promote the stupid groups. I am attaching some screen shot so that you can show your PR team to showcase the real feature of platform

These are the friend list under which a user can classify his friends . Exactly the same thing to which Google has woken up just recently.

From Blog References

Whenever you want to share something, you can decide which lists you want the update to see or which lists you don’t want it to see and you are fine with all other friends having a look at it. For example you don’t want to update a news X to your family or Y to your colleagues.

From Blog References

This is the real killed part Marc, which I don’t know facebook wants to keep hidden and not publicize. You can actually chose which friend lists or people should not see the update. The setting can be made default too. Now don’t ask why you will want to permanently block a person from seeing your updates but still not unfriending him/her.

From Blog References

Q2. Zuck ,The new facebook chat is totally screwed. Who done this ???

Issue 1 : I am forced to see only those friends online which facebook wants me to. Why can’t I see all my friends online. Why facebook has to force the visibility on its users

Issue 2: Unlike earlier chat, I can’t click a person’s pic or name and see their profile while chatting. I have to manually open another tab and type the person name there to open his/her profile. A lot of time during the chat user needs contextual information about the person and removing of that functionality is big pain point

Issue 3: INVISIBLE option. This one has been my long time wish. A lot of time user wishes to be invisible to all his chat list while being able to see who all are online.  User wants to talk to some specific friends of his. Why can’t I be invisible on facebook chat like I can be on any other chat like gtalk, skype, etc.   Please don’t suggest putting such friends in a specific friend list and making me visible to them, because those preference change according to time and mood.  Is bringing the invisible functionality soo tough … Being a computer research myself I beg to differ but user’s unfortunately drive the road map at facebook.

Best Regards

Most Disloyal Social Media Enthusiast

Varun Mittal

Filed under Brand Talk, Conspiracy theory, Opinion Uncensored, Reviews, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Groupon – The Titanic 2.0

July 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Groupon led the frenzy for coupons and deal making seats. At its height it even commanded a valuation of as much as 6 billion $ when Google offered to acquire it.  At a closer analysis we can see that so called business model is really fragile and can come down crumbling like pack of cards.

We will not discuss about the issues of Groupon founders selling out just before the scheduled the IPO. We will also not talk about the controversies regarding user data leak from Groupon India acquisation http://www.sosasta.com. Groupon got a much bigger mess on hand.

Why Groupon will be the probably the first casualty of second dot com crash ?

1. Google with massive control over search engines out in the market offering much better revenue share to the merchants.

2. Google paying merchants for paid but unused coupons unlike Groupon. Now if Groupon matches Google it goes deeper in red, if it doesn’t it loses merchants. The  BI Report explains this Google assault in depth.

3. Host of competitors like  Google, Facebook, Amazon ( via Livingsocial) with very very deep pockets and their other operations firmly in command to give them enough ammunition to cause serious damage to Groupon

4. Very very low entry barriers and now and now in a country like India there are already over a 100 competitors already each vying for a part of the pie.

5 . Stories going around on internet about how small business have been hurt badly after joining Groupon deals and how they were harassed for as much as 50% revenue cut by Groupon sales guys.  Example Story

6. Groupon is still in RED. It had some $117m on revenues of $645m in the first quarter.  Hardly a pleasant picture … I am not sure how the I bankers selling Groupon shares at assumed valuation of 20 Billion $ feel people will buy their long tale of lies and castles of dreams.

It took 11 years for the IT industry to come out of the shock of First dot com crash and story appears to start repeating all over again. I expect Groupon to be the Titanic of this area and unless they realize that they need to deliver value  before expecting such absurd valuation , it is going to be blood shed on the Wall Street again.

I hope good sense prevails in bankers and investors and economy which is just coming back on track after the recession is not pushed off the rails again.

HOPE HOPE HOPE  …  Any One selling discount coupons for selling HOPE ?

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Why Google Plus is not a Facebook Killer today

July 1, 2011 5 Comments

I am an avid social networking user and got on board Google Plus on the first day of Launch through the help of my dear friend Aditya Sharma . This post is my feedback to what I felt about Google Plus. Google is shouting from roofs about better privacy options in Plus but only those who don’t  know how to use Facebook Privacy settings can agree to it.

Statuary Warning : The post might sound greek to normal users and all those are not Privacy Freaks.

 

Nice things -

1) User Interface

2) Ability to see updates of only a specific Circle ,  Facebook fanatics will shout Facebook Groups , but they also know their state. I had 20 friends of mine adding me a group ny name of my university and it is too frustrating until I turned off all those Groups. This was one real nice feature I feel Facebook can learn from.

3) Heard a lot about Video chat stuff, not tested it out , still  Hopeful

Things I didn’t like ( this one is a longer list)

1) No way to import friends from Google contact to Circles on a category basis. I know it sounds confusing let me explain.

I have X friends from my University in my contact list of Google which I have maintained very religiously as the central repository of my friends. I have a Contact list called JIIT ( my university Name)  with 600 members and when I come to Google Plus I want all of them as and when they come to stay in a Circle called JIIT.

Now Google expects me to drag and drop 600 contacts … wow …  Even Facebook allows me to Import a CSV file and it goes into a specified Friend List. Why can’t Google give such a simple option and it has to make it miserable for people to bring in their friends

2) No way to selectively remove circles or groups from viewing your activity.

Google only provides for adding names of Circles who should view it. What if I want something to be visible to everyone except one/two Circle.   The MINUS sign  Google pioneered in search box and Facebook nicely copied allowing you to selectively remove people of friend list from watching your activity.

Google, You just can’t make a horse cart with light reflectors at back and say like your car we also got Tail Lights.

3) No way to ensure spammers don’t add me to their circles. WTH. Google on its forums has replied that you have the right to block them. Why in first place I should get them . Why can’t I chose not be sent random invites.

 

I have not taken a Technical or Creative View on Google Plus,  It was just the pure truthful frustrations of a Dedicated Google Bhakt who expected Google to do it better or at least now I hope they fix it ASAP

 

 

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Google context Ads & AdSense were never so DUMB

May 17, 2011 3 Comments

Following is snapshot of one of the ads I saw at site of the highest circulation daily of India . I was appalled at the failure of Google Ad Sense and the kind of advertisements they are showing in the name of CONTEXT BASED ads.

On an article related to Female Infanticide Google in showing ads related to massage parlours, dating chat rooms … It is ridiculous. I am a great follower of Google but I am seriously not happy with this kind of service from Google to all those who are paying for these ads.

Google really needs to improve its algorithms and move beyond its slogan – “Don’t be EVIL ! “

Even reputed publication groups like Times Group ( The Times of India, The Economic Times)

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Gist : One bet of Blackberry I can certainly vouch for

May 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Gist is one of the best contact management services i have encountered in the recent times. It was recently acquired by RIM ( Research in Motion), the famous blackberry makers.

The site helps you pull contacts from various social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and sync them with your traditional email services ( gmail, hotmail, etc) and the desktop client address books( Thunderbird, Outlook).

Thus you can have a complete address book. Additionally it searches information about

Yes there are some issues like the following  with it, but it is still the one I liked most among all its peers like Soocial, Plaxo, Rainmaker, etc

1) Sync and searched information functionality needs lot of  improvement. The algorithm behind this just looks at the name of contact. In a country like India where family names likes  Gupta or Jain with common names like Abhishek, Sachin, Ankur in most of the cases lead a multiple results. The photos and information about contacts are are not so accurate and sometimes way to vague . For a person like me with very huge address book to manually update each contact is just not possible. So lets see how this shapes up.

2) There is no two way sync, i.e if I make some changes those are not affected to my address book in Google contact, etc. Need to manually do that, but they say are they are working on it.

3) The dashboard informs users about new information fetched by GIST for only 5 contacts at a time from all across the internet when you login into your GIST account. Updating information 5 user at a time with each being opened manually in a new tab is very cumbersome. It would be really nice to have all the new information for all contacts in a scrollable manner on 1 page.

Being a computer researcher I don’t care so much about the issues but the attitude behind handling them. It was an absolute pleasure to interact with the support engineers.  They are aware of the limitations of their platform and accept it humbly and politely.

Currently they are unable to provide automatic contact sync with linkedIn and I was not so happy about that. On my sending support query for the same, what I liked was they suggesting workarounds and pointing to a post where I could write to LinkedIn to allow real time sync.

This is what I call taking care of the customers & being honest. You will see they stick by your side and keep their faith in you. I hope GIST progresses well under RIM and adds new features which are in the pipeline and my wishlist as well.

All the best TEAM GIST !!!

Filed under Brand Talk, Marketing, Opinion Uncensored, Reviews, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook catches Twitter Fever

April 11, 2011 1 Comment

A few minutes back Facebook suffered a not so frequent outage across Singapore. (We are trying to find out status in other geographies) . This is the second such outage in recent months.

Facebook Crash Screen @ www.varunmittal.info

Facebook Crash Screen @ http://www.varunmittal.info

Is it something related to their open sourcing their server architecture and designs ? Has someday used those designs to attack Facebook.  Or is there some query being fired like in Google case which affects only some accounts ?

Another possibility is that it is a  routine maintenance since it is 6:22 AM in USA now on a Monday morning .  Comparatively lesser number of people are online at such a time.

What are the true reasons of this shutdown are currently unknown and we are waiting for official explanations.

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Update: – Facebook is working ok in India, looks like it is an area specific issue or Singapore specific issue.  Let’s see what it turns out to be.

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HootSuite – Happy Owl Private Beta Leaked

April 4, 2011 Leave a comment

Is Hootsuite the new kid on block in the arena of social gaming…

Do we finally have a challenger to Zynga …

Are companies getting insecure about facebook continuing to let them make money and not eat their lunch ..

Read the email quoted below to find answers or pointers to answers of these questions !!!

Link to private beta - http://hootsuite.com/happy-owls

“Board, Investors and Friends,

Things have been going really well at HootSuite for the last while, but after watching the massive growth of Zynga and the likes, I’ve been thinking a lot about if we are in the right business? Building on top of third party platforms can be challenging, and the team and I want a change. I know that this will come as a surprise, but as of today we’re pivoting business models with the launch of Happy Owls (screenshot and link to private beta below). This game is really addictive and I think we stand a great shot of making an even bigger splash in a really fun market.
As always I appreciate your support, and please keep confidential until our public announcement on Monday.
Ryan
______________________________
Ryan Holmes, CEO
HootSuite – Social Media Dashboard  ”
Happy Own Leaked

Happy Owl Leaked

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